Golden Sun impressions

[08.21.01] » Camelot finally makes reparations for Beyond the Beyond.

    The competition for best handheld RPG of all time has never exactly been fierce. Despite some notable entries early in the Game Boy's life, a couple of Neo Geo Pocket games that never arrived in the US, and a few high quality re-makes, the limitations of the Game Boy hardware and audience have kept developers from bringing truly ambitious RPGs to a handheld system. Golden Sun, however, may just change all that. While we'd never resort to the hyperbole of calling Golden Sun the best handheld RPG ever, the brief amount of time we've spent with the import is more than enough to convince us that the bar has been considerably raised.

    Developer Camelot is best known in the US for Mario Tennis and Mario Golf, but the company has a substantial background in RPGs, most recently seen in the under appreciated Shining Force III. Yes, the company also developed the much maligned Beyond the Beyond, but everyone has their off days. Golden Sun, thankfully, is in keeping with the company's best work and, in some ways, surpasses it.

    Graphically, the game is the first GBA titles to really demonstrate that the system may in fact be much more than the "handheld SNES" it was hyped as. The amount of animation, color, and detail packed into each scene is simply stunning and much of it would not be out of place in a Saturn or PlayStation game. The overhead maps are still in the top-down, tile-based style of 16-bit RPGs, but without the rough edges or bland repetition often seen in even the best SNES games. The palette used for the game is rich and varied and almost every scene has some small, animated elements to bring it to life. The game also boasts a heavy use of special effects - weather and lighting subtly changes the scenery and there's even a Mode-7-like world map.

    The battle scenes, however, are where Golden Sun truly shines. These are presented in a psuedo-3D manner, with sprite-based characters on a rotating plane. Each of the game's varied environments features new battle maps and all of them are richly detailed and colorful. The battles themselves have all the flash and pyrotechnics of a 32-bit game - huge spell effects, transparencies, even summons - shrunk down to handheld size. The dynamic presentation of modern RPGs is also reproduced in miniture, with a rotating camera that spins around the combatants and zooms in on particularly impressive attacks.

    Fortunately, the combat system that goes along with these graphics is more complex the normal handheld fare. Beyond the usual assortment of weapon based attacks, the game boasts a intricate magic system which feels like a toned down version of Final Fantasy VIII's junction system. Spells are acquired by finding and equipping Djinns -- magical creatures with one of four elemental alignments. Bonding a character with a Djinn also grants that character a specific stat boost, as well as new field spells for use in the game's dungeons. The Djinns themselves can be set to standby or ready modes. In standby, the character can use the Djinn's spells and enjoy the critical stat advantage, but ready mode gives access to a powerful summon attack.

   Each character can equip multiple Djinns; the more of a particular type she or he has in ready mode, the more powerful the summon becomes. Players are free to switch between the two modes outside of battle, but once in combat the modes can only be switched by employing that Djinn's special attack - yet another move offered by the Djinns. It takes a short amount of time after the summon or special attack for the Djinns to recharge, during which you lose the all-important stat bonus, so careful use of the creatures is the biggest part of Golden Sun's strategy.

   The game also impresses in the sound department. Though the sound effects are the usual collection of tinny clanks and beeps, the music is simply stunning. Composed by Motoi Sakuraba, who also worked on Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean: The Second Story, and Shining Force III, the soundtrack manages to maintain all the sweep and grandeur of his past work despite the move to less able hardware. The sample quality used for the instruments themselves is a bit low, but the music never descends into the poorly synthesized instrumentation that has plagued many GBA games. The GBA may lack the advanced sound chip that the SNES had, but Golden Sun shows that the system can do a more than adequate approximation in the right hands.

   While they aren't as out-and-out amazing as the rest of the game, Golden Sun's dungeon designs also deserve a mention. As in Lufia II, the player has a repertoire of special abilities, which can be used in dungeons and the field to manipulate the environment and solve puzzles. While the early dungeons certainly don't boast anything as complex as Lufia II's, they should provide a pleasant change of pace from the usually straightforward (or random) dungeon crawls of most handheld RPGs. The ability set also offers a few unique possibilities, such the power to read NPC's minds. Hopefully, these are exploited to greater effect later in the game.

    With a GBA sequel already in the works (and one rumored for GameCube), Nintendo is obviously positioning Golden Sun as major new franchise. It's not difficult to see why; the level of detail and care that Camelot has put into the game bears it out. Americans will have the chance to see the possible future of handheld RPGs for themselves when Golden Sun arrives stateside later this year.